donderdag 22 februari 2018

Mike Whitney: Goofy Indictments

“If the election is ‘disrupted’ by voters changing their votes due to Russians posting on Facebook, then the problem is not that Russians are posting on Facebook, the problem is that voters are changing their votes based on posts they read on Facebook.” Bill H, comments line Sic Semper Tyrannis

“God help America. We’ve lost our damn minds.” Publius Tacitus

Robert Mueller’s Friday night indictment-spree, is a flagrant and infuriating attempt to divert attention from the damning revelations in the Nunes memo (and the Graham-Grassley “criminal referral”) which prove that senior-level officials at the FBI and DOJ were engaged in an expansive conspiracy to subvert the presidential elections by spying on members of the Trump campaign. The evidence that the FBI and DOJ “improperly obtained” FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign affiliate, Carter Page, has now been overshadowed by the tragic massacre in Parkland, Florida and the obfuscating indictments of 13 Internet “trolls” who have not been linked to the Russian government and who are being used to conceal the fact that the 18 month-long witch hunt has not yet produced even one scintilla of hard evidence related to the original claims of “hacking or collusion”.

Think about what’s Mueller is really up to: He’s not just moving the goalposts, he’s loading them onto a spaceship and putting them on another planet. Where’s the evidence that Russia hacked the DNC computers and stole their emails? Where’s the proof that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia? That’s what we want to know, not whether some goofy Russian troll was spreading false information on Facebook. That has nothing to do with the original charges. It’s just politically-motivated gibberish that proves Mueller has nothing to support his case. After a full year, the investigation has failed to produce anything but a big goose egg.

According to the indictment, the alleged Russian trolls “posted derogatory information about a number of candidates” and its “operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump…and disparaging Clinton.”

Big whoop. If people are so malleable that they can be brainwashed by some suggestive posting on Facebook, then maybe we should abandon democracy altogether. But that’s not what this is really about, is it? Because if it was, Mueller would have posted the contents of those nefarious Russian comments in the indictment…WHICH HE DIDN’T because he knows it’s all obfuscating bullsh** designed to make the sheeple think evil Putin is dabbling in our precious elections.

Oh, and here’s a little tidbit the MSM managed to overlook in their typically-hysterical coverage. This is from journalist Alexander Mercouris at the pro-Russia website, The Duran: (If you think your delicate mind might be brainwashed by Russian propaganda, please, shield your eyes!)

“The third thing to say about the indictment – and a point which has been almost universally overlooked in all the feverish commentary about it – is that it makes no claim that the Russian government was in any way involved in any of the activities of the persons indicted.

Nowhere in the indictment is the Russian government or any official of the Russian government or any agency of the Russian government mentioned at all. Nor at any point in the indictment is it suggested that any of the persons indicted were employed by the Russian government or were acting under its instructions or on its behalf….” (The Duran, Alexander Mercouris)

No Ruskis involved? But how can that be? We were assured that diabolical Russia is behind everything bad that happens in America. Has evil Putin been sleeping on the job??

Yes, it’s true that the Internet Research Agency, LLC, is in fact located in St. Petersburg but–as yet–there is no known connection between the company and the government. And, if there was, you can bet that Mueller would have exploited it for all it’s worth.

By the way, Mueller’s presumption that the hackers were trying to influence the election, is just that, a presumption. It has no basis in fact whatsoever. It is mere speculation like the rest of the claptrap he’s come up with. The more reasonable explanation is that the hackers were trying to make a little dough on “pageviews or clicks” rather than trying to persuade voters to vote for one candidate or the other. Here’s more from the indictment:

” Defendants and their co-conspirators began to track and study groups on U.S. social media sites dedicated to U.S. politics and social issues. In order to gauge the performance of various groups on social media sites, the organization tracked certain metrics like the group’s size, the frequency of content placed by the group, and the level of audience engagement with that content, such as the average number of comments or responses to a post.”

WTF! Isn’t this what everyone is doing, including the Intel agencies, advertisers, media and corporations? So now it’s a crime? Give me a break!

Here’s a blurb from the comments-line at Sic Semper Tyrannis:

“The “conspiracy” started in 2014, and cost a whopping $1.2 MILLION, which includes salaries, tech support, and bonuses. The indictment includes info that the Russians ran ads supporting Black Lives Matter, Muslims, Jill Stein, Ted Cruz, Rubio, and Trump. They also organized rallies in support of, and in opposition to Trump and Hillary Clinton. They continued their activities up into 2017, still organizing pro-Clinton and pro-Trump rallies. At one point, the indictment says that the Russians ran an ad that reached 59,000 people, which is laughable, people with a camera in their kitchen get more views than that. Essentially, after about 1.5 years of investigating “Russian collusion” this is all they’ve come up with.” –London Bob, Sic Semper Tyrannis

And here’s more from the indictment:

“U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. U.S. law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General.”

This is mind-numbingly stupid. Does Mueller really think he can cobble together a case against 13 foreign-born defendants based on the thin gruel of Russian support for “Black Lives Matter, Jill Stein and Donald Trump?” Good luck with that, Bob.

Political analyst Paul Craig Roberts summarizes how absurd the indictments are in a Friday article tiled “The Result of Mueller’s Investigation: Nothing”:

“How did the 13 Russians go about sowing discord? Are you ready for this? They held political rallies posing as Americans and they paid one person (unidentified) to build a cage aboard a flatbed pickup truck and another person to wear a costume portraying Hillary in prison clothes….”

The whole thing is ridiculous and anyone with half a brain knows it’s ridiculous. The only reason this fiasco continues to drag on, is because the mandarins in the US National Security State run everything in America and they’ve decided that they can invent whatever reality suits their foreign policy agenda and the rest of us will simply accept it in silence or be denounced as “Putin apologists” or “Kremlin stooges”. Fortunately, facts and reason appear to be getting the upper hand which why the deep state powerbrokers are getting so desperate. They’re now genuinely concerned about what might “come out” and who might be exposed.

Do the names John Brennan or Barack Obama ring a bell?

Indeed. I’m sure both names would factor quite large in any seriously impartial and thorough investigation of the Russiagate conspiracy.

One last thing for all you supporters of Donald Trump. I suggest you carefully examine his latest tweet on the topic. Here it is:

“Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!” Donald Trump, Twitter

As I expected, Trump is going to save his own skin, but allow the “Bigger Lie” to persist. It looks to me that Trump may have cut a deal with his deep state antagonists to support their spurious claims of Russian meddling as long as they exonerate him on the charges of collusion. That means, he will NOT use his power as President to try to uncover the roots of Russia-gate fabrication. (that would probably expose the former Directors of the CIA and NSA and, perhaps, even the former president of the United States, who likely gave Brennan the greenlight to set the wheels in motion.) All of these suspects will go uninvestigated, unindicted, and unpunished just like the perpetrators of the Iraq War, just like the perpetrators of the Financial Meltdown, and just like the perpetrators of all the major crimes against the American people. As always, it is complete and total immunity for Parasite Class while the rest of us have to play by the rules. But you probably already knew that.

Trump will get off the hook while the rest of us languish in permanent ignorance of how the shadow government really works. You heard it first here.